Davronov Sardorbek 201923232

Week 1: Introduction to public administration

Summary

At the beginning of our class, we talked about the Introduction to public administration. Professo
explained to students about syllabus, individual presentation, midterm, final, attendance sheet and
others. After those students quickly introduced themselves to their classmates. And also professor
taught us about what public administration is, Sayre's Law.

My thoughts

As ever class, the beginning of this class was short and interesting

Week 2: History of public administration

Summary

In the second week, we learn the history of public administration. Firstly, we talked about some
issues a d important events in history like Civil War, the independence of US progressive era
(1864-1920). And then we look at the periods of pre-public administration, namely, beginning of
public administration, Immigration and Independence, Foundation of public administration and
others. In the history of public administration, the role of US, Egypt, Rome, Greek and other
historical countries was really big. How can we get enough information about the history of public
administration? To find an answer for this question, W.Wilson's book – “the Study of
Administration “is reliable source. By it, we can get knowledge about scientific management
human relations plus principal theory, public policy, great social and etcetera.

My thoughts

In my opinion this class is very important. Because learning the background, fundamental
knowledge of any class is very vital part. If we understand it from beginning, it is easier to get
other knowledge depending on this class

Week3: Different ethical perspectives on public administration

Summary

In this section, we learnt about public administration versus democracy, bureaucracy versus
democracy, corruption and other issues. Cause of I am a student of International Studies major, I
am going to talk more about corruption. During our class, we talked about how to fight against
corruption and students submitted their individual answers. And we looked at other types of
problems in ethics. Murders in this part of class, government employees of Nazis kill the Jews
during the Holocaust. For learning this case we used Milgram's experiment on obedience to
authority. This experiment also has ethical problems in research as well. Then we get some
reactions to the corruption.

My thoughts

In my opinion corruption is the biggest enemy of any country. Every State, government, humanity
should fight against this problem. By this way, we can improve our life’s quality.

Week4: Public administration, politics and public values

Summary

Our main goals in this week is learning public administration versus business administration,
politics in public administration, policy typology, implementation, courts and court decisions.

Business administration is efficiency, effectiveness, and responsiveness in service delivery

Public administration is concerned with justice, liberty, obedience, and the role of the state plus
ethics, social equity.

Let’s back to Sayre's Law in session 1. Business administration and public administration were
fundamentally alike in all unimportant aspects.

Politics in public administration. Spoil system is about president elected ( designed secretaries and
offices).

What about public administration as neutral? apolitical? Public administration research was
grounded in political theory. Apolitical public administration proved unrealistic. Laws are
interpreted by public administration.

We talked the cases in US, UK, Korea, Japan, Germany about court. Labor secretary imposed
arbitrary standards to limit exposure to benzene. Administrators need to establish set standards.

My thoughts

Courts solve the biggest problems among nations. It should be fair.

Week5: Organizational theory and contemporary ethnical issues

in the workplace

Summary

In this week, we learnt about classical management, neoclassical management and contemporary
management. We can learn classical management by Frederick Taylor’s “Scientific Management “.
Main ideas are one best way, time and motion study, dividing work, efficiency, economic man.
Four basic tenets are:

1One best way to do each job – which is discoverable. 2Select individuals best suited to each job

3Ensure standardized job performance by training and wage rewards 4Division of labor, managers
plan, control, organize

The characteristics of neoclassical management are

1Stressed the importance of demographic values, informal organizations, and non-monetary

incentives in management. 2Rejected the notion that the principles of management were
Scientific.

Contemporary Organizational theory – Organizational economic theory. Principles: Managers have

information and expertise. Shareholders can observe profits, but they cannot directly observe the
managers' efforts. Their problems: adverse selection, moral hazards, solutions to moral hazards.

My thoughts

As we can see, this week is about the types of management. In my opinion classical management
is more useful. Because as I mentioned in summary main ideas are efficiency economics best way
and etcetera.
 Week6: Human resource management in the public sector

Summary

In this chapter, we learnt about human resources management and some of their inside and
outside issues.. What are traditional human resource elements and additional concerns? They are
hiring, training and development, rewarding, and creating and maintaining a diverse workplace,
measure of power in workplace, balance both work and family, accountable for merit principles,
motivating workers, cooperation and teamwork and etcetera. Job description is a list of tasks,
duties, and responsibilities. Job specification is a list of knowledge, skills, abilities, and other
characteristics. How workers confirmed to jobs? You can see some types of selection methods as
follows:

Interview, references and biographical data, physical ability tests cognitive ability tests, personality
inventories, work samples, honesty tests and drug tests, and others

Regarding to their issues we can say retirement issue. Because after retirement workers’ benefit
decrease. Other one is equal employment opportunity issue. Main reason is about inequality and
discrimination.

My thoughts

Every workplace owners want to accept intelligent, strong, clever workers. But for these kind of
employers they should create enough opportunities in their job. And other issue is how can we
rise these resources? Pay attention to educational system more than now!!!

Week7: Public decision making

Summary

This session is one of the difficult parts of our semester. Because for understanding we should
learn more about this topic. And also cause of time limitation we learnt it in just few hours. Main
goals of this week are theoretical models of decision making, implementing and evaluating the
decision and etcetera. What are the nature of decision making? According to Holzer and
Schwester they are pinpointing the problem, identifying causes, setting objectives, formulating
action alternatives, evaluation alternatives. Rational model. Grounded in economic principles:
Scarcity of resources, perfect information, full knowledge of alternatives, and opportunity cost.

Satisficing model. Critics to rational model: Herbert Simon argued that the rational model is
unrealistic because decision makers have cognitive limitations and incomplete information.

In public choice theory, “If everyone votes for the candidate closest to his favored position, then
the candidate choosing the optimal position of the median voter wins.”

My thoughts

I know, to understand and explain this topic are not easy. Just reading this kind of summaries are
not enough to get what public decision making is. Therefore, I suggest the readers to get more
information please find other extra sources. Because it will be helpful.

Week8: Public budgeting and citizen part

Summary

This chapter gave us information about budget process, general budgeting how government get
this money, budget types, theories of budgeting. Budget is a plan regarding how revenue will be
spent on a year-to-year basis. How government get money? Federal government get money from
income taxes corporate income taxes, payroll tax for social security and Medicare. State
government get money from personal and corporate income taxes plus consumption and sales
taxes. Local government get it from property taxes and users fees and consumption taxes as wrll.
There are two types of budgeting: operating budget and capital budget. Operating budget is
about short term plan and year to year budget. Capital budget is about Long-term plan that deal
with the financing of capital project: building, bridges, quality of life project; No Capital Budget in
federal level, financed through, borrowing from bonds: issues bonds to raise revenue, tax
exemption.

My thoughts

Yes I understand that budget should be one of the most powerful sides of government. Because it
is provided by economic, mainly, taxes. By budget, states give salary to workers, build schools,
kindergartens, universities and … Therefore, if every government official workers are “pure”,
budget can help hugely to develop countries

Week10: Performance and evaluation in the public sector

Summary

The plans of this chapter are performance measurement and program evaluation. Measuring
government performance is a prerequisite tool for accountability and improvement. Performance
measurement tries to answer the following:

Is the organization fulfilling its mission and accomplishing stated goals and objectives? Is the
organization producing unintended impacts? Is the organization responsive to the people? Does
the organization keep within its scope of authority? Is the organization productive? Does it
perform well?

Types of performance indicators are input indicators, output indicators, outcome indicators and
efficiency indicators. Seven purposes of performance measurement are control, budget, motivate,
promote, celebrate, learn, improve.

What is program evaluation? The use of social science research methods in an effort to determine
whether a public program is worthwhile. Its characteristics are client-centered and applied
research. Types of program evaluations are needs assessment, assessment of program theory,
logic model, assessment of program processes, program impact assessment, types of
experimentations, program efficiency assessment.

My thoughts

I think, both learned theories ( performance and program evaluation) are mainly but not fully
connected to economics.

Week11: Collaborative governance and network management in democracy

Summary

The main goals are federalism and inter-local shared government. What is federalism? Federalism
is basically, relations between different levels of government. There are two types of federal
grants: federal categorical grants and block grants. Inter-local shared government. Types of Shared
Services: Sharing Personnel, Sharing Equipment, Sharing Internal Services, Sharing External
Services.

3 obstacles of Inter-local shared government:

1. Such efforts are sometimes opposed by unions, civil service workers, and tenured government
workers

2. Local residents may be opposed to such efforts if given insufficient information regarding the
potential benefits

3. Local community officials may fear losing control over specific services areas

My thought

As we read the title of this chapter, it is about connections between different sides of government
in democracy. Democracy level is measured how different sides of government are connected to
each other as a chain.

Week12: Public administration and social equality

Summary

What is new public administration? A fundamental commitment to social equity means

that new public administration (NPA) is anxiously engaged in change : seeks to change those
policies and structures that systematically inhibit social equity and attempt to find organizational
and political forms which exhibit a capacity for continued flexibility or routinized change

Social Quity as third pillar of public administration:

Efficiency, Economy plus Social equity. Fairness in the delivery of public services: it is
egalitarianism in action – the principle that each citizen, regardless of economic resources or
personal traits, deserves and has a right to be given equal treatment by the political system

Equity is now more broadly defined to include not just race and gender but ethnicity, sexual
preference, certain mental and physical conditions, language, and variations in economic
circumstances. The words “multiculturalism” and “diversity” are now often used to comprehend
this broader definition of social equity.

Four suggested processes for understanding and improving public administration:

The distributive process, the integrative process, the boundary- exchange process, the
socioemotional process.

My thought

One part of this chapter is definitely belong to my major. It is inequality. There is no any rule in
the world which is probably used in a positive way everywhere. I know this is serious problem.

Week13: Leadership in the public sector

Summary

We can easily understand the main idea of this session by its name. This week was about leaders.
Trait theory: Embraces the idea that leaders are born; traits include intelligence, self-confidence,
sociability, integrity, diligence, and even height. Leaders possess certain innate characteristics that
make them well suited for leadership.

Skill theory is centered on human capital.

Three types of skills:

Technical – middle and line management: abilities and knowledge to complete a particular task

Human – middle and line management: interpersonal skill, being good with people; motivate
subordinates by fulfilling those needs

Conceptual – top management: ability to think critically and work with the idea

Situational leadership suggests that the leader must alter his or her leadership approaches based
on the circumstances. According to this theory, managers will use a combination of relationship-
and task-oriented approaches.

Contingency theory similar to situational leadership, contingency theory suggests fitting

leadership style to a particular situation.

5 Types of leadership power:

1 reward power. 2 punishment power. 3 expert power. 4 legitimate power. 5 reference power

My thoughts

We know many millionaires, billionaires. Many people think that they achieve themselves to this
rewards, success. But almost all of them have their group, community. They are the leaders of
their teams. That’s why we know them. Being leader is not only meant you are one who achieve
yourself, it also mean you should be provided, motivated moved by other’s helps, suggestions,
advice.

Week14: Copying with technological change

Summary

Plans for this week were technology organization the network and its security, data evolution,
convergence and innovation, the connected society, future issue in public administration.

One of the interesting parts of this session is future issues in public administration. What are
they? Big data is a massive volume of both structured and unstructured data that is so large that
it's difficult to process using traditional database and software techniques. Examples of big data
are as follows;

Visa processes per day is more than 172,800,000 card transactions. 500 million tweets per day is
the same as the 5700 tweets per second and 1.15 billion active Facebook users make data during
social interactions. Non-emergency 311, other information and communications technologies
enhance responsiveness, effectiveness, and efficiency of government entities. Non-emergency call
to 911 delay police, fire, and EM services. 311 – a non-emergency help number. Direct link to
government service & monitor their request improve government efficiency by centralizing the
contact point between government and citizens. Perception of efficiency has improved.

Connected society provides governmental services electronically, usually over the internet to
customers, to reduce their physical character by recreating them virtually.

My thoughts

We are living in technological world. We can’t imagine our life without them. As there are two
sides of coin, technologies are being used in positive and negative way. If I say about its helpless,
they are dozens. But cyber-attack, nuclear weapons are great examples of their problems. And
these issues cannot be controlled fully by governments.